Sticky #48

 

I’m finally putting up a sticky from my new project, which is still Top Secret, so this is probably the only sticky you are going to see from it for a while.  But as this sticky gives nothing away, I’m okay with giving you a little sneak peak.  As you might guess from the sticky, the new project has to do with memory, and I spent much of this past week looking up interesting little notes about memory.  This is one such note, on a mythological slant.  I’ve always thought the River Styx was the one that you drank from to lose your memory at death, but it turns out I was completely wrong.  It’s the Lethe River that makes you lose your memory, and you drink from it not at death but just before being reincarnated into your next life.  This, of course, ties in to the question I asked last week: would you rather remember or forget your past lives before being reincarnated?  Or, put another way, would you drink the water of the Lethe River, or would you try to find the Mnemosyne River instead?

Sticky #… wait a minute!

So there is no sticky today.  I’ve been trying to find one I’m interested in putting up (I don’t just throw up random stickies you know), but I’ve just started on a new project, and unfortunately I’m not yet ready to reveal that new project to the world.   I am collecting stickies on it, though, so look for those soon.

In the meantime, let’s see if anyone will come out of the woodwork here.  If you have to come back for a second life on earth, which would you rather:

A) I’d like to remember my old life please!  No point in making the same mistake over again.

B) I’d rather not know.  If I’m going to come back, I want to come back as a whole new me!

As for me, I’m still deciding, but I think this new project certainly has my brain a-buzzing about it!

Sticky #47

Happy New Year!

We are, at this point, a couple days into the new year, but as this is the first time we’ve seen each other since 2009, I thought it was appropriate.  This week’s sticky is from Apollo and Daphne, and is probably the last of the NaNo 09 stickies we will be seeing for a while, because now my mind is back on Fie Eoin, and I’m typing up all of the handwritten Phooka Tales that I never bothered to type up last year so that I can work on editing it this year.  I’m hoping to have a final draft ready to go out by November, but we will see how that goes.  It turns out I’ve learned a lot about writing in the last year, and Phooka Tales needs a lot more work than I had originally envisioned.

But for today we will focus on Apollo, and Eros.  Pretty much throughout the entire book Apollo wants to hit Eros.  If you know the myth of Apollo and Daphne you know it actually starts with an argument between Apollo and Eros – with Apollo telling Eros that arrows aren’t toys and he should step aside and let the big boys play with them.  Eros, of course, doesn’t appreciate being called a child and so makes Apollo fall in love with Daphne, and Daphne despise Apollo.  It happens much the same way in my book, but with a much longer time frame (and fewer arrows).  So this scene is Eros taunting Apollo, and Apollo almost punching him (for the third or fourth time).  Daphne stops him, but Eros has already caused enough trouble between them that it doesn’t keep Apollo away for long, and near the end of the book he finally gets in that one good punch.

I hope your 2010 starts off with that one good punch - something to kick start the new year and the new goals you have set for yourself.  As for me, I’ll be getting back to Phooka Tales now, because I have a busy year ahead of me as far as editing.  And maybe next week I’ll bring you a sticky from the new story that has been milling about in my brain.  I think you’ll like it.

Sticky #46

 

 Happy Yule!

I don’t have a Yule-flavored sticky today, because I don’t have a Yule-flavored sticky at all, so I thought I would post some more of Apollo’s stickies.  Plus, Apollo is associated with Mithras, who was the original god born on the Winter Solstice, so I have found a way to tie it all together in the end.  Happy Birthday Mithras! 

But that really has nothing to do with today’s sticky.  Everyone knows Zeus is a womanizer, so in Apollo and Daphne, Poe and his sister aren’t the only bastard children of Zeus, just the first.  And although I can’t have my main character and his sister go and kill a dozen kids with no repercussions, I can have them pick on them and call them names.  Which they do.  Not very friendly, but Apollo and Artemis were never known as the most friendly of the Olympian Gods.

And if you really want a Yule-flavored sticky, see Sticky #27.  This scene takes place on Yule, and the death of Aleda eventually gets turned into Legend, as Fie Eoin’s version of Yule.

Sticky #45

 

 Happy December everyone!  I am very proud to announce that I not only won NaNoWriMo by writing 50,000 words in November, but I finished Apollo and Daphne at just over 65,000 words on November 30th!  I also managed to be the Municipal Liaison for the Charleston Region, so not only did I write a novel, but I made sure other people wrote their novels as well.  And many of them were able to finish their 50k as well!  I’m very proud of my Wrimos.

Today’s sticky comes straight out of my purse, where it was hanging out all month, waiting for inspiration.  Anytime I had any little idea I wrote it down on the sticky.  This isn’t the only one, but it is the one that has a few different things on it instead of one whole scene.  As it turns out, you can write 166.5 words on a sticky if you write very small.  I’ll have to upload that one next.  This one has ideas from all through the book, and at the bottom is the word count from one day’s writing (that’s a pretty good word count, no?).

And while we are still talking about NaNo, let me take a minute to point you in the direction of Doyce Testerman.  I followed his blog all November long, and it seemed that every time I was having a problem with one thing or another, that was the day that Doyce decided to write about it!  I highly recommend the blog – his latest posts are about NaNo, but you can use them for your writing any time of the year.  So go, read that!  You’ll learn more about writing there then you will reading my little stickies (they are much more about the idea process then the actual writing).

Sticky #44

Happy Halloween!  I know last week I said I would see you in December, but I had one last sticky to sneak in before November came around.  I’ve done all my cleaning for the month (I washed the floors AND the bathrooms!), and I’ve finally gotten a decent amount of sleep to start the month off right.  Now all that’s left to do is hand out candy and stay up til midnight watching Where the Wild Things Are so I can get the first few words in before bed.

And speaking of NaNo, I’ve heard a lot of people this year saying that they are going to try, even if they don’t think they will win.  I think that’s great.  It’s not really the winning that is the great thing about NaNo – it’s the writing.  It’s getting out something that needs to come out.  And even if you can only get out ten thousand words in November, that’s still ten thousand words.  It gives you something to work off of.  And it’s ten thousand more words than most people in the world have written.  So even if you try, and “fail”, it’s still better than not trying at all because you are scared of failing.

Which brings us to this week’s sticky.  The High Priestess of Fie Eoin happens to be a very smart person.  She’s also a very tormented person, because she had the chance to save Fennec’s life and didn’t, because she was afraid she would kill him.  So he died anyway, and she’s been living with that guilt for eight years, and is now trying to save Kaye from the same fate.  I thought her words were appropriate for all those people who are afraid to do NaNo because they might fail.  If you don’t do something you will certainly fail at it, but if you try you just might discover you can write 50,000 words in 30 days.  Or save someone’s life.

Sticky #43

I’ve been pretty bad the past few weeks about putting up stickies.  The first weekend I missed I was in Washington DC visiting my little sister and my new brother-in-law, and after that NaNoWriMo got in the way.  What’s that, you say?  NaNo is in November?  Not if you’re an ML like I happen to be this year – then NaNo starts in October with planning Kick-Off Parties and Write-Ins, trying to put together goodie bags and print out workbooks, and beating your region into RSVPing and deciding on a region name (we are currently deciding between Sweet Tea Wrimos and Swamp Things).  So between my birthday, my trip to DC, and NaNo, October has been a busy month for me!  Thank god next month all I have to do is write a 50,000 word novel.  Although I still can’t promise to keep up with the stickies next month.

Speaking of NaNo – this week’s sticky comes from last year’s NaNo Novel, Phooka Tales.  The premise of the book is that Holly’s fiance’ breaks up with her while she’s oversees for her job.  This sticky shows how she feels while at work the next day.  When something shitty like that happens it’s always nice to have something to take your mind off of it, but you can still feel it there, sitting inside you, and once you mind is on it again, forget trying to get anything done!  No wonder Holly goes a bit crazy.

Now I’m off to get my soundtrack ready for this year’s Noveling Adventure.  See you in December!

Sticky #42

Happy Feast of Eoin!  Today is the feast dedicated to Fie Eoin’s war god, Eoin, and the day that new warriors are inducted.  There is a big celebration, a ceremony for the inductees, and a lot of drinking, eating, and dancing.  This day marks the end of the long, hot training season and the beginning of the harvest season when they prepare for winter.  This day also happens to coincide with my birthday   Or maybe that’s not so random at all.

Today’s sticky is from the Feast of Eoin, describing a little bit of the general scene.  There is a lot going on during the Feast and I wanted to give a quick general overview of it.  Plus, I was listening to some Loreena McKennitt yesterday and that always makes me think of Fie Eoin.  So I jotted this down in the middle of sweeping the floor and plan on getting it into the story sometime before November.  Because you know what happens in November, don’t you?

www.nanowrimo.org

Sticky #41

I don’t know what it is about autumn, but as soon as the temperatures begin to cool down (and cool here is around eighty-five degrees) I get very creative.  Maybe it’s the upcoming NaNo, or maybe it’s the body’s natural response to the coming winter where everyone stays indoors for long periods of time.  Either way, I’ve been dreaming strange dreams lately and turning them into stories in the daytime.  This week’s sticky is from one such dream about Mackinac Island.  If you’ve never heard of Mackinac Island, go rent the movie Somewhere In Time – it takes place there and the island hasn’t really changed at all.  There are no cars, everyone gets around by bike or horse, and all the houses are old Victorian style.  It’s a very charming island, but in my dream they quarantined the island from the mainland because of a plague (swine flu, maybe?), and 100 years or so later it was still quarantined.  Turns out, being stuck on a small island like that for a century can turn a group of people crazy, and what started off as a nice horse-filled romp around the island became a dangerous escape from people who purportedly believed in Reason above all else.

Of course, the girl in this sticky IS reasonable, and she doesn’t choose death, but she gets herself in a load of trouble anyways.  I’m still not sure what happens to her in the end – it may be a tragedy – but I’m pretty sure her own version of reason wins out over her crazy father’s version.

And if you are ever in the upper Lower Peninsula of Michigan, you really should visit Mackinac Island.  Their fudge is the best in the world.

Sticky #40

 

I’ve been splitting my time lately between Fie Eoin and Phooka Tales.  With another NaNoWriMo almost upon us I’ve finally let Phooka Tales sit long enough to go back and start editing (and sometimes I just have days where I want a little Brett in my life), but Fie Eoin is my first baby and Kindra and Gar are very demanding.  They don’t let FE sit dormant for long.  I’ve also been storylining the Apollo and Daphne story, although I still need a name for that one.

This week you are getting almost two stickies for the price of one!  How lucky do you feel? 

This sticky was written well before the idea for Apollo and Daphne came to be.  In fact, this story was written before NaNo last year, because I never did use that bottom half in Phooka Tales.  I just wrote down everything that happened in the lab I worked in as inspiration for the story.  By the time it came to write PT, I didn’t use most of what I had written down.  A large chunk of in-lab storytelling was left by the wayside because it wasn’t as interesting as what happens when the creatures begin appearing.  The in-lab stuff was just my cathartic way of dealing with work stress without quitting (or going crazy and seeing creatures myself!).  I highly recommend writing stories where you fire all of your co-workers to relieve stress.   

The top half of the sticky was me trying to decide how to introduce Gar’s friends into Fie Eoin.  At first I had Gar introducing them to her as she joined them for breakfast on her first morning as a Warrior.  But then I realized that their village isn’t that large, and Kindra would already know all of his friends from childhood.  So I needed a new way to introduce them.  I used the same part of the story to introduce the different groups in Fie Eoin – the senior warriors, the new warriors, the women and what they do while all the warriors are out being warriors all day.  I think you can tell that the warriors are my favorite part.